[Hidden-tech] Re: ? about self-promo

[Giannina Granata Silverman]

Michael,

Thank you for your excellent insights.

My thoughts mirror your own. While Hidden-tech has been great for me to 
meet people in a live setting (the offline events have been great), the 
site does not do any heavy lifting in terms of leveraging our community 
and our expertise.

I am going to send you an example of a community I belong to in Seattle 
that is similar to Hidden-tech, it's made of small solopreneur types and 
indie businesses, but it uses a social networking model. I wish the 
Hidden-tech site was more like this! It's a self-promotional killer app!!

It is: www.biznik.com

The Biznik community is Seattle-based but anyone can join, and there are 
members from all over the world who are starting their own local 
"chapters". And non-members can look within the member directory for 
people they want to work with. The founders closely manage the site and 
the vision of the community, but anyone can contribute by putting on a 
seminar in their area (you get a cut of every seminar you put on) or 
hosting a networking happy-hour in your area. The more you contribute, 
or show up, or post on the message board, or bring in new members, the 
higher you rank in searches. And, you can pay $100 a year to be a 
supporting member, which buys you a higher search rank and and revolving 
ads, but otherwise the site is free. I am a non-paying member and my 
profile gets about 50-80 views a month.

What's great about this network is that they've figured out how to use 
the internet to it's ultimate advantage.
The site also has links to member blogs so people can self-promote to 
their hearts content.

BTW, if anyone wants an invitation to Biznik, let me know via email and 
I'll invite ya! Or you can sign up on your own.
Thanks! Hope you're all well!!
-g

-- 
Giannina Granata Silverman
Rocket Ranch Design + Advertising
gsilverman at rocketranchdesign.com

Seattle: 425.939.6823
Mass: 413.303.9453
Cell: 425.780.1693

www.rocketranchdesign.com



Michael Muller wrote:

>   ** The author of this post was a Good Dobee.
>   ** You too can help the group
>   ** Fill out the survey/skills inventory in the member's area.
>   ** If you did, we all thank you.
>
>
>
>I agree.  I think there are many of us that have overlapping skills, and there's no need to have a bidding war on banner ads or highlighted bios, but I do believe the website (and the organization itself) should bring the individual up to the surface a little more. I mean, we're the Hidden Technology of Western Mass, but... who are we? If you go to the website it's not a simple task to find individuals. Is one of the organization's goals to promote the membership?
>
>First of all, you have to sign up on the website to access any of the listing information. Is that something someone outside of the HT community wants to do? No. So... no marketing to the outside world. And since (rightly so) pushing your product is discouraged in the mailing list unless specifically someone posts a request for your specific skills (ie; SEO, blogs, etc), there's limited marketing to other HT members too. And that's fine. I mean, we don't need to be barraged by everyone's "Hey, this is what I do" emails. But there could be more inner-HT promotion. I have no idea what most of the people on this list do, or in the org itself. And not everyone in the org is on this mailing list.
>
>Second, there's only a directory search on the website. There should also be listings by category. I hesitate to provide an example as it's done by my software, but at the risk of this email not going through, why not check out how I do it:  http://www.montaguema.net/directory.cfm?gpt=34   Note how you can do a search, as well as click on a category. And once you click on a category, the resulting listings each have a list of categories they are listed by, which you can click on to go look at other groupings, etc. Perhaps the HT site can do something like this too? Or better?
>
>Third, and this may be the most controvercial, but I agree with the time/$$$ investment thing. If you do a service or pay dues, you should get some sort of ad presence on the website AND in the emails. I've been thinking about this for a long time, about how to do it in my software. Emails that go out when someone posts a corkboard post could have a "brought to you by" message at the bottom of the email, taken from the directory if the listing owner had passed a certain muster (ie; volunteer time or money). That way we, the HT community, are exposed to what each other are doing. For me, getting my skills out there and finding out about what my neighbor does that may help me is the main reason I joined. So far I haven't learned much. I have to go to the events to meet the other members and ask them what they do. Which is great, but... I spend a lot of time online. Should I have to wait until the next elbow-rubbing session to find this stuff out? I'd really like to browse the directory. Searching implies you know what you're searching for.
>
>Lastly, there are a lot of local community websites all over the valley. HT should be a presence on them all. I know of several just in the Montague / Greenfield area (one run by me), and we're obviously much wider than that. If we're talking about volunteering time, someone should make sure that HT has an organizational logon to all those sites and post any events to their messageboards / blogs / calendars, etc. Get more members, and get more traffic to the site. As the president of MCTV I have tasked the station staff with posting our TV schedules and press releases to all local websites.  The outreach is paying off, and it doesn't take very long.
>
>Just my 4c.
>
>Michael
>
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>At 03:39 PM 1/3/2007, Daniel Fried wrote:
>  
>
>>  ** The author of this post was a Good Dobee.
>>  ** You too can help the group
>>  ** Fill out the survey/skills inventory in the member's area.
>>  ** If you did, we all thank you.
>>
>>
>>
>>I think there are some other interesting questions we could explore here… one of which being exactly what kind of organization are we anyway?  I know we do a lot of internal networking and referrals, but there have also been concerted efforts (thanks again Amy) to market Hidden-Tech as an organization to other organizations and businesses.  Do we want to go down the road of a kind of virtual corporation where we try to market ourselves to the outside world as a place to go for technology solutions?  If so, it might not be in our best interests to focus the organizational website on individual marketing where we’re trying to one-up one another with our own individual advertising.
>>
>>Of course there are a lot of complications that would come with that approach as well, but I think it’s a conversation worth having.
>>
>>-Dan
>>
>>-----Original Message-----
>>From: hidden-discuss-bounces at lists.hidden-tech.net [mailto:hidden-discuss-bounces at lists.hidden-tech.net] On Behalf Of Mitch Anthony
>>Sent: Wednesday, January 03, 2007 12:00 AM
>>To: A - Z International
>>Cc: Hidden-discuss at lists.hidden-tech.net
>>Subject: [Hidden-tech] Re: ? about self-promo
>>
>>Thank you Amy, for everything.
>>
>>And let me use your question to raise a larger one:
>>
>>What is this - wide open access to the most creative minds in the valley - worth to me?
>>
>>EVERY time I've posted to this list - no matter how arcane or sophisticated the need - I've found an answer within the day. (The first time I posted - looking for a web programmer to meet some pretty demanding requirements - I noticed that the respondent was from Greenfield.  I live in Greenfield. In the ensuing e-mail exchange I suggested that I stop by at the end of the day and share a creative brief and a site map. When I got to his house I realized that I could see my house from his front yard. Hello.)
>>
>>In answer to your question, no, I wouldn't pay for my own promotional page. Because I don't think that's the best way to promote services like those we offer. Nor do I think that we are each other's audience. Paid pages are paid pages and they look like paid pages. 
>>
>>However, referral and reference is the heart of a network. And with a bit of finesse this list-serve of mouthy individuals (I'm guilty) can easily be turned into a true network of referring professionals.  
>>
>>And I sure would pay to be a member of that group. (Even though I get it now for free.)
>>
>>And I sure will pay for the privilege to ask the most creative minds in the valley their opinion on what I'm wondering/thinking/needing about. (BTW, Cingular is the way to go in this hilly valley. They grew out of a network of small rural carriers, so they tend to own the steeple tops and radio beacons it takes to beam straight in this up and down terrain - my opinion.)
>>
>>I propose it's time to create a tiered dues structure, with appropriate allowances for those who can't yet pay full price.
>>
>>This is Western Freaking Mass.  Let's act like we get it.
>>
>>Mitch Anthony 
>>
>>P.S.  I second Tom Adam's suggestion.  I sometimes resist asking a question I know the group knows the answer to, only because I also know the same topic was covered 3 months prior... but in that time I've lost the thread.  
>>
>>Another reason for dues: paid librarians.
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>>On Jan 2, 2007, at 4:50 PM, A - Z International wrote:
>>
>>
>>Would you pay for your own promotional page?
>>
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>
>--------
>Michael Muller
>Muller Technologies
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